Mr. John Dolan:

Our work on renewables has been progressed in line with our energy research programme, which we started in 1997. It has 53 different research strands and we have tested every renewable that can be considered viable for schools. We put our first PVs into schools around the year 2007. Again, we have been developing and monitoring the progress of those, along with thermal solar panels also.

The requirement with respect to the feed-in tariffs is a newly-introduced opportunity in the past year or so. There will be a benefit there for schools to avail of that period when they are shut down because, for approximately 50% of the year, there will be the opportunity to export electricity. As for the school renewables, even when the school is closed it will use some electricity with respect to its emergency services, security and everything else but there also will be the opportunity to export electricity through the feed-in tariffs. All of that is being taken into account.